There is a single lobbyist, Black, who has admitted that he has made cell phone calls to deal with private client issues from the McCain bus. But that’s it. According to the McCain campaign, there is not a single person on the McCain campaign payroll who also works as a lobbyist….

There are, however, other former lobbyists who do work for McCain, people like Rick Davis, the campaign manager, and Mike Dennehy, the political director, as well as other current lobbyists who have unpaid roles, including fundraising for the campaign. But the same can be said for the Obama campaign. Steve Hildebrand, who is Obama’s deputy campaign manager, gave up his job as a lobbyist for Environmental Defense when he joined the Obama campaign. Buffy Wicks, Obama’s western field director, is a former lobbyist for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. (emphasis mine)

A politically hooked in K Street corporate uber-lobbyist advising McCain for free, while making stratospheric rate lobbying calls on the McCain "Straight Talk" campaign bus ("Hey Bob, guess where I’m callin’ you from this mornin’?"), is an equal comparison to a fella who worked solely for the Environmental Defense Fund. Not.

Jeebus, did Scherer just fall off the turnip truck? Or did Rick Davis — lobbyist turned McCain campaign manager — slip him a blast fax he couldn’t refuse?

In most jurisdictions, if you are an attorney or work in an advocacy position for a group with interests covered by government oversight, you are required to register as a lobbyist if you work a certain number of hours for that client — even if you aren’t really working as a "lobbyist" per se, but negotiating a settlement or some other agreement with a governmental agency. This is true if you represent a corporation or union, or any group in between with government interests, for just about every jurisdiction I know of for lawyers and other advocates.

Anyone who has been inside the Beltway understands that there is a difference between representing a client on a single matter or a single interest group advocacy, and gliding back and forth over the years from a posh K Street lobby shop to campaign work where you gather political favors. Someone who pretends that isn’t the case is simply an idiot or misinformed. As Jack Shafer explains:

The Times reports that the enemy of special interests, money in politics, earmarks, and lobbyists has staffed his presidential campaign with lobbyists and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office. That particular lobbyist, Mark Buse, the paper reports, came to McCain’s staff through the revolving door. Before he was a telecommunication industry lobbyist, Buse was the director of McCain’s commerce committee staff.

When critics question McCain’s integrity, his allies, such as McCain adviser and lobbyist Charles Black, say the man is beyond reproach. "Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don’t think his personal and social relationships matter," Black told the Times.

This, of course, is hooey. What the lobbyist craves above all is access, and anything that provides that edge is coveted. In many cases, both lobbyists and their clients know the mission to change the mind of a member of Congress is hopeless. Often the point of the exercise is to be seen and heard by the member. If the lobbyist does not carry the day with the member, the client counts on the "relationship" to pay off in the next visit or the visit after that or the visit after that.

Getting inside the "red zone," to steal a metaphor from Washington Post reporter Jeffrey H. Birnbaum’s feature about the tourism industry’s recent lobbying efforts, is almost as good as a touchdown. Corruption, if that’s the right word for it, arrives on the installment plan as a lobbyist moves closer and closer to a member. (emphasis mine)

I’m sure there are some current or former lobbyists who are working now on behalf of individual presidential candidates because they truly believe their candidate is the best person to run the country. I’m also certain that a whole lot of them are power-hungry, greedy bastards hoping to cash in bigtime on their politically connected cache. The trick is discerning which folks fall into which basket.

At least 24 McCain staffers or advisers were either registered to lobby Congress (as of year-end 2007) or were previously lobbyists….Former and current federally registered lobbyists include McCain’s campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, chief political adviser, senior policy adviser, more than half a dozen economic policy advisers, and numerous national and state co-chairmen.

Clearly, nothing to see here. Let’s just keep sweeping it under the rug and take the campaign’s word for it, eh, Mr. Scherer? Journamalism at its finest…

There are a lot of links in this one — and each one goes to something specific in terms of facts and background. I’m particularly proud of my FEC filing find on that payment to Rick Davis’ lobbying firm in McCain’s last filing.

And here’s a nice attempt by the DNC to capitalize on this and put the bite on me:

John McCain is proving to be no different from the swift-boating, vote-suppressing Republicans of years past. That’s why we have to hit him hard and hit him fast now, before his campaign has the chance to pick up more momentum. From proving him wrong when he said he was doing “exactly what Howard Dean did,” to showing how he used his federal funding to get on the ballot in places like Kentucky, we’re not letting John McCain off the hook.

Both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama will need the full support and resources that the Democratic Party has to offer to stand up to John McCain. Contribute $20 or $100 today:

Jeff Birnbaum at the WaPo has been hitting this issue on McCain since last year — but he covers the KStreet beat for the WaPo, so it’s pretty much his balliwick in terms of reporting. There has been a sporadic blip here and there, but very little pick-up of the finer details on a lot of this in terms of long-term lobbyist relationships with McCain — and the ins and outs of the revolving door to his staff.

I saw the colbert rerun of some reporter throwing the NYT down on the floor because there were nine pages of reporting on the McCain lobbyist story. No, I prefer my reality fact-free, please. Just gimme some soundbites of innuendo and that’s good bad journalism!

You know, the in-and-out thing. With so many people looking for work, you’d think that a candidate might like to hire some unemployed folks for this open positions and make a nice claim of how he created some jobs…just sayin’.

One of the things I meant to mention, and missed somehow in the above tome, is that a lot of the folks who work with McCain who were previously lobbyists work for telecoms and other comunications or defense related industry lobbying when you look at their client lists. Think back to the Senate issues with net neutrality — that debate happened in the Commerce Committee in the Senate. That raises a cloud with regard to an appearance of impropriety that ought to be explored further, but instead we get a “nothing to see here” far too often from reporters who make excuses rather than doing the digging work that ought to be done on this.

quite the informative post christy, I took some liberties off of your idea, I hope you don’t mind, emboldened if you will;

A politically hooked in K Street corporate uber-lobbyist advising McCain for free, while making stratospheric rate lobbying calls on the McCain “Straight Talk” campaign bus (“Hey Bob, guess where I’m callin’ you from this mornin’?”…that’s righhhiiiteee, is there anything you want me to ask if he can take care of for ya?…care to make a contribution before I do that?),

I can understand the in-and-out thing in terms of hiring people with particular expertise. A lot of these folks go into lobbying after having worked for a regulatory agency which covered that industry in part because of that earned expertise working for the regulator — that’s incredibly valuable inside information and insights for a client trying to navigate an industry. The same with governmental service, you want folks in your office who understand the various nuances of a particular industry you may be overseeing.

The huge problem, though, is which master is ultimately being served by the person in question? Their own potential profit margin by stacking up favors and chits to be sold off later to the highest bidder? Maybe they are working for the good of the public, having gotten fed up with inadequate regulation? But, honestly, how often do you think THAT happens?

The whole system is a mess. And what DeLay, Abramoff, Norquist, Santorum and their pals did with their smarmy implanted K Street project has made it far, far worse.

Can somebody tell me how Spotlight works? When I am in the “Focus” phase and I hit “preview” after making a comment, it says “You have to enter a comment. Really.” What am I supposed to do to complete the process?

Re Spotlight: I have this problem on Digg sometimes, it says You have to enter a comment, when I already did. What works there is to make one small change, like erase the last letter and type it in again. Whether this will work with Spotlight, don’t know.

It leaves the bad taste in my mouth that he has business as usual in mind. The continuation of the cronyism that has so plagued us with Bush.
Step right up, put yer money in the hat and when I get there you will be taken care of.
Government for the highest bidder.

Wow, that is huge point! That may not get a lot of traction with Corporate media that likes to show the public sex scandals instead of revealing their media interests but I do think it would gain traction amongst the digg/slashdot/geek crowd.

I’m assuming Obama is going to win big in November. That premises what comes next. The big lobbies are in a bind. Obama is apparently getting loads of money from outside the usual list of suspects. He doesn’t need them. Better than that, there may be spill-over effects onto other races. It’s not just coat tails, its tails with cash stuck to them. If that happens, if what people here at the Lake have been doing for progressive candidates like Darcy Burner goes viral, then the lobbies are going to have to buy off people like Hoyer and hope they can subvert the Democratic Party.

One fight at a time. The main one is to win the Presidency and a veto-proof majority in both houses. But we can be sure that if that happens the K street will go into overdrive to buy whoever can be bought on our side. And believe me, even if we win, especially if we win, there will be enough prostitutocrats to take their money.

Here is my question: Is McCain a crooked hypocite or is McCain so intoxicted with his own virtue that he does not believe he should be required to follow the rules he would impose on other lesser mortals?

West Texas Intermediate crude (the US benchmark) is trading at $102.21/bbl. The standard NYMEX futures contract is at $102.70/bbl. Our economy can’t support these kinds of prices. It looks like the next speculative bubble will be in commodities. They will be bid up until the economy stalls. Stagflation here we come.

Oh man, you don’t even know the half of it, yet. But thanks — I was up until after midnight working on the first draft of this last night. The Peanut’s been dealing with a tummy virus this week, the latest version of ick from her preschool classmates (one little boy tossed his cookies at school on Monday, and half the class has had this now…blergh), so momma’s writing time has been a bit piecemeal this week as a result.

This was one of those articles that demanded to be written, and I couldn’t get to sleep last night without finishing a draft.

In 1999, Republics had all sorts of proposals to help when oil prices rose then. Strange how silent they are now. Could it be that they didn’t care then about prices but only wanted to tweak the then President? Good thing for them that there’s no MSM with a memory or they might get asked about that now.

I don’t know what to think of the Times. The McCain story was incredibly sloppy for what they had to know would be taken as a significant attack on him. At the same time, it opened the issue of his sleazy ties to lobbyists. Now there is this deliberately misinformed and misinforming article on Obama. Is it just that with Bill Keller at the helm they only commit journalism by accident?

To be fair, though, the reporting that Jeff Birnbaum has done on this has been extensive — click through those links above about mid-way through the post. He hits the KStreet beat for the WaPo, and his digging on McCain’s campaign has been great the last few months. His December 2007 article is very well done, and a great resource.

The huge problem, though, is which master is ultimately being served by the person in question? Their own potential profit margin by stacking up favors and chits to be sold off later to the highest bidder? Maybe they are working for the good of the public, having gotten fed up with inadequate regulation? But, honestly, how often do you think THAT happens?

The whole system is a mess. And what DeLay, Abramoff, Norquist, Santorum and their pals did with their smarmy implanted K Street project has made it far, far worse.

Granting the “far worse,” didn’t the ball get rolling in this direction under Democrat Tony Coelho? He was a certified Good Guy with respect to the Americans with Disabilities Act, but if I remember correctly, under Clinton he also had a major role in recruiting Big Money donors to the Democratic Party– sorry, no linky.

Honestly — this problem has been going on as long as I can remember and well before. The words “Teapot Dome Scandal” ring a bell? It’s not a single-sided problem. It’s just that the KStreet Project raised it to a whole n’other level of gaming the system as a kickback art form.

Getting inside the “red zone,” to steal a metaphor from Washington Post reporter Jeffrey H. Birnbaum’s feature about the tourism industry’s recent lobbying efforts, is almost as good as a touchdown. Corruption, if that’s the right word for it, arrives on the installment plan as a lobbyist moves closer and closer to a member.

I suppose I am foolish to keep wondering why John Edwards’ campaign could not get any MSM coverage worth mentioning, but I do, and I see a close connection between that unforgivable lapse and this failure to question McCain’s lobbyists.

Honestly — this problem has been going on as long as I can remember and well before. The words “Teapot Dome Scandal” ring a bell? It’s not a single-sided problem. It’s just that the KStreet Project raised it to a whole n’other level of gaming the system as a kickback art form.

I certainly do remember “Teapot Dome Scandal.” In fact, I’ll bet I’m one of the few people on this list to have actually seen “Teapot Dome,” which is a geological formation in the middle of Wyoming. Near where my ex-wife’s mother was born and raised. By Teddy Roosevelt Republicans.

And your reply is one reason why I wonder a bit at describing the K Street Project as a Republican issue. I see it as a corruption issue, and Congress needs to put a noose on it. Oh, yeah. That’s like asking Wall Street Bankers to reform the IRS?

Bob, sorry — but I don’t see where I was saying that lobbyist issues are solely a Republican issue. You’ve lost me there. I did this piece about the McCain campaign because a Time reporter tried to construct a false narrative that McCain’s campaign lobbyist coterie was no big deal because everyone does it to this extent. But (1) that’s not true in terms of the comparisons he used and (2) McCain’s hypocrisy on this issue for years has gotten a full-on pass. And that needs to stop.

But I fail to see where I’ve said it’s only a Republican issue — this post was solely about McCain and the pass a vast majority of the media still keep on giving him for his conduct…because yet another reporter tried to give him a pass.

Scherer is a cousin to Gavin Newsom and a great grandson of Thomas Addis, a well known medical researcher and radical activist. Michael has responded (not satisfactorily, but he’s trying) on Time’s blog to the many critical comments his post received. He wrote for Mother Jones and has the potential to be a positive force in mainstream journalism, let’s not be to harsh, though I have to agree his article was bogus, as Christy so eloquently explained.